Hegel's Psychology (The Oxford Handbook of Hegel), draft

This paper walks through four different approaches to Hegel's notion of Consciousness in the Phenomenology of Spirit. Through taking four different approaches our aim is to explore the multifaceted nature of the phenomenological movement of consciousness. The first part provides an overview of the three chapters of the section on Consciousness, namely Sense-Certainty, Perception and Force and the Understanding, attempting to unearth the implicit logic that undergirds Consciousness' experience. The second part focuses specifically on the shape of Sense-Certainty, providing an analysis of the movement from Sense-Certainty to Perception from a neuroscientific view. Thirdly, we consider an inferentialist reading of the chapters on Consciousness which has been made popular by Robert Brandom. We think that while this view elucidates the connection that Hegel draws between meaning and use, it fails to account for the vital place of immediacy in each of the shapes. Finally, the fourth part suggests that Hegel's notion of Consciousness improves the reading of tragedy he develops in chapters 5 and 7 of the Phenomenology. While many critics have noted that Hegel fails to do justice to tragic experience, Consciousness contains an epistemology that develops analogously to the heroes of ancient tragedy. Each approach in this paper comes at Hegel's description of the journey of Consciousness from a different angle, and together they paint a multi-layered picture of a highly important part of Hegel's corpus.

2013

A Critical Rethinking in Seventeen Lectures provides a clear and philosophically engaging investigation of Hegel's first masterpiece, perhaps the most revolutionary work of modern philosophy. The book guides the reader on an intellectual adventure that takes up Hegel's revolutionary strategy of paving the way for doing philosophy without presuppositions by first engaging in a phenomenological investigation of knowing as it appears. That preliminary investigation observes how the prevailing view of knowing that condemns cognition to operating with presuppositions proves unable to justify its own knowledge claims and ends up undermining the distinction between knowing and its object on which that view depends. Unlike other studies of Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit, the work rethinks the entire argument with sustained attention to the project that gives the work its revolutionary significance. Free of unnecessary jargon and always focusing on clearly unraveling the argument in its entirety, Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit: A Critical Rethinking in Seventeen Lectures, will be indispensable to undergraduate and graduate students of philosophy, Hegel scholars, and anyone interested in tackling the radical project of doing philosophy without foundations.

Idealistic Studies, 2010

Hegel indicates toward the end of his Phenomenology of Spirit that there would be a parallelism in the categories of his later system to the various configurations of consciousness in the Phenomenology. Some general correspondences have been indicated by Otto Pöggeler and suggested by Robert Grant McRae, but I argue in this paper that there are at least four important and more specific parallels, bringing out simultaneously a similarity of content and a difference of approach and methodology in the two works: 1) in the philosophical construal of "categories"; 2) in the conceptualization of a "phenomenology"; 3) in the analysis of the dialectical relationship of religion and art; and 4) in the relationship of the history of philosophy to the Absolute.

Standing at the apex of the late 18th– early 19th century German Idealist tradition, contemporary thought has all but universally dismissed the philosophy of G. W. F. Hegel. Against this current this paper travels with those select few who today call for a serious re-examination of Hegel as the sought after theoretical foundation for true radical critique. To that end we unabashedly utilize Žižek's persuasive work to organize a re-reading of the Phenomenology of Spirit, Hegel's most well-known and arguably single greatest work. We begin with its first chapter on sense-certainty to find that Hegel's discussion of language is still highly relevant; then travel through its key third chapter on the understanding to put it to use to undermine our continuing and highly counterproductive obsession with deep meaning; only to end with the mother of all Hegelian topics, Absolute Knowing, to find that it is not some absurd egotistical stance but quite possibly the most modest position a modern subject can assume. Stopping along the way to reconsider a few other 'figures of consciousness', this strategy – organized as it is under the twin topics of meaning and subjectivity – amounts to a non-hermeneutical phenomenological approach to the Phenomenology which simultaneously endeavors to theorize such a textual approach in general.

Academia Letters, 2021

Karl Rosenkranz was the editor-in-chief of Hegel's Collected Works, vols. 1-12(1832-44). He wrote Hegel's Life (1844) as a supplement to these Works. 1 He has an advantage over most other commentators on Hegel. Not only did he speak with Hegel about his philosophy, but he also had access to his manuscripts, letters, and the recollections of students, family members, and acquaintances. Rosenkranz was himself an adept and prolific philosopher. He is remembered primarily today for his work on Hegel, but in his own right he is still considered for his Encyclopedia of Theological Sciences (1831), Pedagogy as System (1848)-which was translated into English under the title Philosophy of Education (1886)-Aesthetics of the Ugly (1853) and the Science of the Logical Idea (1858). 2 By virtue of his close ties to Hegel and his own philosophical abilities he appears able to understand and express the complexity and subtly of Hegel's philosophical thought. His report, while informative and carrying weight, should be read, however, with caution when it comes to Hegel's formative years. He is describing events and compositions that occurred forty years before his report was written, and about a time where the principal proponents of the system of idealism, namely, Hegel and Schelling, later in life did not agree on what had transpired or been intended. 3 Rosenkranz, at times, seems loose with his descrip

2021

Tereza Matějčková’s book presents a highly interesting phenomenological reading of Hegel’s early masterpiece. The result is a proposal to take the title seriously – such that we can see the book as the earliest introduction into the methods and topics of philosophical phenomenology, despite the fact that Husserl himself, in contrast to Heidegger, did not seem to see the narrow relation. I especially value Tereza Matějčková’s very deep understanding of the dialectical humour and irony of Hegel’s writings. However, I understand the Phenomenology of Spirit in a somehow more radical way as a most general ‘logic’ of self-consciousness. It shows how referring to myself is referring to the world and vice versa, despite the fact that the word ‘world’ does not play a prominent role in Hegel’s text. Some disagreements result over Hegel’s wide use of metaphors and analogies in his structural analysis of personal self-relations, for example in his reconstruction and critique of the age-old (in ...

"This treatise makes an outstandingly important contribution to the interpretation of the Phenomenology." --H.S. Harris, The Owl of Minerva A major criticism of Hegel's philosophy is that it fails to comprehend the experience of the body. In this book, John Russon shows that there is in fact a philosophy of embodiment implicit in Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit. Russon argues that Hegel has not only taken account of the body, but has done so in a way that integrates both modern work on embodiment and the approach to the body found in ancient Greek philosophy. Although Russon approaches Hegel's Phenomenology from a contemporary standpoint, he places both this standpoint and Hegel's work within a classical tradition. Using the Aristotelian terms of 'nature' and 'habit,' Russon refers to the classical distinction between biological nature and a cultural 'second nature.' It is this second nature that constitutes, in Russon's reading of Hegel, the true embodiment of human intersubjectivity. The development of spirit, as mapped out by Hegel, is interpreted here as a process by which the self establishes for itself an embodiment in a set of social and political institutions in which it can recognize and satisfy its rational needs. Russon concludes by arguing that self-expression and self-interpretation are the ultimate needs of the human spirit, and that it is the degree to which these needs are satisfied that is the ultimate measure of the adequacy of the institutions that embody human life. This link with classicism - in itself a serious contribution to the history of philosophy -provides an excellent point of access into the Hegelian system. Russon's work, which will prove interesting reading for any Hegel scholar, provides a solid and reliable introduction to the study of Hegel.

An Analysis of “Unhappy Consciousness” in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit In this paper, I analyze the “Unhappy Consciousness” (“das unglückliches Bewußtsein”, ¶ 206- 230) according to German philosopher, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel’s account in his Phenomenology of Spirit. I argue that the Hegelian account of the “Unhappy Consciousness” (¶ 206- 230) undergoes “three different ways” (¶ 210), or experiences, which result in the emergence of a new “object” (¶ 230), namely “Reason” (¶ 231- 437). Further, I argue that the philosophical significance of the Hegelian account of the “Unhappy Consciousness” lies, ultimately, in that it provides the transition between self-consciousness and “the idea of "Reason"” (¶ 230).